Some new international comparisons of productivity performance at the sectoral level

Summary. We present several new measures of gross-output-based total factor productivity (TFP) at the sectoral level for manufacturing industries in the G-7 economies. We calculate measures of both TFP growth and comparative levels. These are obtained by combining conventional Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development sectoral data on labour and capital inputs with data on intermediate inputs from national input–output tables. Additionally, we derive cyclically corrected measures of TFP growth. Our evidence shows that the considerable gap in TFP between the USA and other G-7 economies is closing but remains significant.     

Adolescent male prostitution by choice

The literature on adolescent male prostitution is scant. The few existing papers tend to focus on the status of adolescent runaways coerced into prostitution within large cities. This article describes prostitution in a midsized midwestern city without many of the anticipated preconditions. Such practice may be more common than is normally assumed.     

Meeting the Needs of Vulnerable Young Men: A Study of Service Provider Views

This article uses a qualitative approach to elicit the views of 31 professionals who provide services to vulnerable young men. The findings reveal six key themes following focus group interviews: (i) the importance of masculinity in explaining problematic behaviour; (ii) the misuse of alcohol and drugs; (iii) alienation and social isolation; (iv) concerns about suicide and self‐harm; (v) the quality of existing services; and (vi) recommendations for changes to services. Service providers generally acknowledged the social context in explaining these behaviours and argued for enhanced services and a more developed skills base in working with vulnerable young men.     

Childhood Mortality Estimates Using the Preceding Birth Technique: Some Applications and Extensions

The Preceding Birth Technique has proved to be a simple and effective way of estimating mortality during the first two years of life when the question on the survival of the preceding child is asked at the time of a subsequent delivery. This article shows first that earlier worries about significant biases in the estimates are unfounded. Amongst the possible sources of bias considered are: the link between birth-interval length and child survival; the effects of birth intervals differing from 30 months; and the contribution of other systematic biases, such as the omission of all reports on the survival of a woman's last child. Results from a trial in the maternity clinics in Bamako, Mali are presented to illustrate both practical aspects of the method and selection effects by age and parity. A strong association between the survival chances of the succession of children born to one mother emerges. The second part of the article describes how the method can be applied more widely by asking the key questions at times other than a subsequent delivery. Adjustment factors are developed to correct for the biases introduced when the sample includes only mothers whose last-born children are alive at interview.Finally, some examples are given of recent use of the question on the survival of the preceding child in household surveys.     

Family Therapy's Coming of Age: Less Haste,More Speed

Responding to the question implicit in the title of the 1985 National Family Therapy Conference ‘Coming of Age’, the author argues that Australian family therapy still has a number of issues to face before it can be said to be a mature and independent adult. The paper focuses on three issues — ideology in family therapy, theory for practice, and practice itself— and raises questions about the adequacy of Australian family therapy's theoretical maturity, suggesting that there is still too much reliance on the ‘new’ and on the ‘guru’ rather than on a solid building on therapeutic experience.     

Single-Crossing, Strategic Voting and the Median Choice Rule

This paper studies the strategic foundation of the Representative Voter Theorem (Rothstein in: Pub Choice 72:193–212, 1991), also called the “second version” of the Median Voter Theorem. As a by-product, it also considers the existence of strategy-proof social choice functions over the domain of single-crossing preferences. The main result shows that single-crossing constitutes a domain restriction over the real line that allows not only majority voting equilibria, but also non-manipulable choice rules. In particular, this is true for the median rule, which is found to be group strategic-proof over the full set of alternatives and over every nonempty subset. In addition, the paper also examines the relation between single-crossing and order-restriction. And it uses this relation together with the strategy-proofness of the median rule to prove that the outcome predicted by the Representative Voter Theorem can be implemented in dominant strategies through a simple mechanism. This mechanism is a two-stage voting procedure in which, first, individuals select a representative among themselves, and then the winner chooses a policy to be implemented by the planner.     

Resettlement and Social Change in Newfoundland

Le gouveroement de Terre-Neuve amorca, en 1953, un programme de relocalisa-tion visant a demenager les habitants des petits villages de peche (outport) vers les grands centres qui offrent plus de possibilites. Les quatre monographies que nous couvrons ici discutent les resultats de ce programme ainsi que les reactions des insulaires eux-memes. Ces rapports sont bases sur des etudes effectuees de 1966 a 1968. Trois d'entre eux sont des etudes de cas de relocalisation et de changement social dans certaines regions de Terre-Neuve. L'etude d'Ottar Brox presente une vue generate des conditions economiques et sociales de la Province. On considere que Terre-Neuve possede une economie dualiste. Les rapports con-tiennent un certain nombre de recommandations specifiques.
In 1953, the government of Newfoundland initiated a resettlement programme to move people from the small outports to larger centres with more opportunities. The four reports discuss the results of this programme, and the reaction of the people on the island to them. They are based on research carried out in 1966–1968. Three reports are primarily case studies of resettlement and social change in different parts of Newfoundland. The report by Ottar Brox provides an overview of the social and economic conditions in Newfoundland, which is identified as having a dualistic economy, in which the two halves are separated by a "conversion barrier." The reports contain a number of specific recommendations.